• GBU_28@lemm.ee
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    8 days ago

    He’s a pedigreed professional at the top of his field at the end of his career. Literally a world class statesmen regardless of if you favor his positions. Why wouldn’t such a person be worth 5-10 mil? He earned his position which can be with a strong salary… For decades. Even tame investments in the whole market would steer him handily towards that worth

    That doesn’t even touch on the mountain of social good and enrichment and support of the poor that he has directly contributed to over his career

    • Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world
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      8 days ago

      You’re missing the point entirely.

      He could be adolph hitler, he could the most pure kind person who’s ever lived. Either way, your monetary value has no context on how or why you have the money. Nobody is argueing if he’s good at heart.

      My comment was that I never know how to react to HIM saying eat the rich, when he’s rich.

      You’re trying to bring politics and emotions into this. That was never the conversation.

        • Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world
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          8 days ago

          I’m saying that gap doesn’t matter. At that point, it’s just numbers. It’s like a high score as opposed to meaningful currency that dictates your life. I never said he’s the richest. I said he’s rich, and his whole thing is “destroy the rich”.

          But thats him.

          • stickly@lemmy.world
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            8 days ago

            When is rich to you? Is it $100k? $500k? Or just when you have to start adding “-illion” to the number? Is a 25 year old who worked for 5 years with 100k as rich as someone who worked for 50 years to get 10x that?

            The gap does matter, it’s not our fault you can’t comprehend the magnitude of these gaps

            • Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world
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              8 days ago

              I never said I don’t comprehend the gaps. I’m saying they don’t matter.

              Tom is a rich guy, who doesn’t need to work for a living. He lives off the interest in his bank account.

              Jeff is a rich guy who doesn’t need to work for a living. He lives off the interest in his bank account.

              Bob is a guy who has some savings, but if he stops working he becomes full of debt.

              The difference between Tom and Jeff are the number of decimal points in their bank accounts. The difference between them and Bob is that Bob doesn’t work to maintain an image, or run a company. Bob works because he HAS TO.

              The second you have the ability to quit your job, and not impact your ability to live, is when you’re rich.

              Sure, there’s a big gap between having a few billion, and having a few million if you look at numbers. There is no difference however with you being required to work. Thats why the gap doesn’t matter.

              • stickly@lemmy.world
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                8 days ago

                So is it the interest that’s the problem? Or the not working?

                You could be unable to work on disability with an inherited house and get pretty much to that poverty line. Why isn’t that the same?

                What if there wasn’t interest but I got $5m in the lottery and just decided to spend $1m buying a house in a good neighborhood and paying off debts. Then I just take out 50k out from my mattress per year until I die.

                If you’re a certain age and don’t care about your estate you could do the same thing with a line of credit. Now I have negative net worth but I’m choosing not to work while maintaining a decent life.

                There is a real, tangible difference between any of these scenarios (yours or mine) and having enough money to shape legislation or buy yourself into the fucking Whitehouse. That just happens to be roughly the difference between ~1 million (living comfortably) and 1+ billion (buying lobbyists)

                • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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                  8 days ago

                  You could be unable to work on disability with an inherited house and get pretty much to that poverty line. Why isn’t that the same?

                  Why do I get the feeling that the person you are talking to would call those people either lucky or lazy?

          • iAvicenna@lemmy.world
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            8 days ago

            how does it not matter? you can still be a millionaire without exploiting the system and other people (you definitely need to be lucky or have good starting conditions to your adulthood though). But even with good starting conditions, you cannot earn billions without exploiting a whole country’s worth of population and evading tax. This is the class of rich, people like Bernie are talking about. If you think “its just numbers” and dont see a difference between the two, you are not thinking in detail you are blurting out sentences sorry.

      • GBU_28@lemm.ee
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        8 days ago

        He ain’t rich. He’s experienced, the top of his industry and at the end of his career. He’s accrued decent wealth given those life details but frankly it’s TINY for how he clearly could have spent his life.

        He’s not rich, he’s successful and at the finish line.

        • Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world
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          8 days ago

          He’s ABSOLUTELY rich! The rest of what you said isn’t really on topic, and I don’t disagree with it, but he IS rich.

          • GBU_28@lemm.ee
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            8 days ago

            He is not rich. He is well off at best (as I said, at the very end of a prestigious career). Other people are just very very poor. But the gap between him and the poor is tiny compared to the gap between him and musk and co